Using Peer Teams to Lead Online Discussions

Rourke, Liam; Anderson, Terry

doi:10.5334/2002-1

Cited by 128 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

104

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, peer facilitation reduces the instructor's "authoritarian presence" in the discourse (Rourke & Anderson 2002, p. 4), thereby fostering more open, authentic discussion among students. Indeed, some research suggests students feel more comfortable expressing their opinions in peer-facilitated discussions (Baran & Correia, 2009;Cheung & Hew, 2010;Correia & Davis, 2007;Rourke & Anderson, 2002). Limited evidence suggests students may post longer messages and post messages more frequently (Poole, 2000).…”

Section: Facilitation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student Actions and Community in Online Courses: The Roles Played By Course Length and Facilitation Method

Epp

Phirangee

Hewitt

2017

OLJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fostering a strong sense of community among students within online courses is essential to supporting their learning experience. However, there is little consensus about how different facilitation methods influence students' sense of community or behaviors. This lack of understanding means instructors do not have the information they need to select an appropriate facilitation method when teaching online. This challenge is further complicated by a poor sense of how community building is influenced by the length of an online course. To better understand the relationship between these factors, we explored students' sense of community across four graduate-level online courses. Two of these courses employed an instructor-led form of facilitation and two employed a peer-led form of facilitation. For each facilitation method, one course lasted an entire term (12 weeks) and the other lasted half a term (6 weeks). This two-by-two betweensubjects design is augmented with interview data. This design enabled the study of both variables and possible interaction effects. The findings revealed students in instructor-facilitated courses experienced a stronger sense of community. Longer courses were also associated with a stronger sense of community, although the relationship was weaker than that of facilitation. No interaction effects were detected between facilitation method and course length. Follow-up analyses examined the relationship between facilitation style, course length, and a set of twelve student behaviors (e.g., note writing, note reading, and replying). The results revealed that both facilitation style and course length were associated with differences in students' note attributes including note length, the Flesch-Kincaid grade level of the text, and the frequency of their replies. Collectively, these findings offer evidence that both facilitation style and course length are related to students' sense of community and the behaviors they exhibit online.

show abstract

Section: Facilitation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student Actions and Community in Online Courses: The Roles Played By Course Length and Facilitation Method

Epp

Phirangee

Hewitt

2017

OLJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Estes resultados parecem alinhados com os estudos existentes sobre os alunos como facilitadores de discussão online (Rourke & Anderson, 2002) que sugerem que esta abordagem é benéfica não só porque incentivar o envolvimento dos alunos, mas também porque melhorar os resultados da aprendizagem.…”

Section: Considerações Finaisunclassified

Como criar e manter interações de qualidade em cursos online?

Correia

2017

EaD em Foco

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Frequentemente em cursos online, os alunos participam em discussões que ocorrem em sistemas virtuais. Estas discussões online são muitas vezes atividades obrigatórias que contam para a nota final do curso. Mesmo que, em muitas ocasiões, os alunos considerem improdutiva a exigência de participar nestas discussões, eles participam na mesma por causa do peso que têm na avaliação final. Discussões online sem significado e de pouca qualidade são muitas vezes o resultado desta atividade. Um estudo de caso foi realizado com uma disciplina online de pós-graduação em tecnologia educativa em universidade nos Estados Unidos. Este curso oferece duas estratégias inovadoras para superar os desafios colocados pelas discussões online: (1) moderação de discussões facilitadas pelos colegas; (2) curadoria de conteúdos digitais. Este estudo de caso evidencia a eficácia destas estratégias e a possibilidade de as reusar, transferir para diferentes ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem e implementar em diferentes sistemas. Palavras-chave: Discussões online, Facilitação pelos colegas, Curadoria de conteúdos digitais. How to create and sustain high quality interactions in online courses?: The potential of peers moderation and digital curation AbstractParticipation in online discussions are often required from students while taking online classes. These are often mandatory activities that count towards the course final grade. Therefore, even though in many occasions online students find this requirement unproductive, they still participate with fear of lowering their grades. The results are often meaningless and superficial online conversations. A case study has been conducted with a postgraduate educational technology online course at a large university in the United States. This course offers two innovative strategies to overcome this issue: (1) peer facilitation, and (2) digital content curation. This case study offers evidence of these strategies effectiveness. This case study demonstrates the effectiveness of these strategies and the possibility of reusing them, transferring them to different virtual learning environments and implementing them in different systems. Keywords: Online discussions, Peer facilitation, Digital content curation.

show abstract

“…This form of distance delivery places a premium on quality student-student interaction that is supported in a format that allows for asynchronous reflection and scholarly expression in text format. This high level of studentstudent interaction capacity allows for reduced student-teacher interaction, the capacity to make effective use of peer moderators (Rourke and Anderson, 2002), and facilitates students sharing and discussing student-content learning resources gathered or created by students (Collis and Moonen, 2001). …”

Section: Web-based Coursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Warschauer (1998) finds that the use of strategies such as re-reading the text, soliciting help, or using a dictionary aids the comprehension of text-based, computer-mediated discussions. Anderson (2002) maintains that the teaching of meta-cognitive strategies can help students develop stronger language learning skills.…”

Section: Learner -Content Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

IRRODL Volume 4, Number 2

Authors

2003

IRRODL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pointing to the "objectivised, rationalized, technologically-based interaction," Peters (1973) referred to the then prevailing correspondence forms of distance education as "the most industrialized form of education" (p. 313). With such features as assembly line methods; division of labor; centralized processes of teaching materials development, production and dispatching; student admissions enrollment systems; automated registration, course allocation, and student support, and personnel management systems, distance education institutions demonstrated management structures and practices utilized in industrial and business organizations. Large numbers of courses and students were thus "processed" in correspondence, radio, and televisionbased distance education systems.Over the past decade or so, there has been a major worldwide expansion of distance education systems, particularly online, Web-based systems. Unlike prior distance education systems, however, network-based distance education models do not so readily accommodate industrialized forms of education. Indeed, the interaction that network-based models enable between students and course content, teachers and peers, sets practical and attenuates the extent to which such teaching-learning transactions may be regarded a form of industrialization.This divergence from industrial patterns of mass production is further reinforced by, currently in vogue, psychological approaches to learning that encourage abandonment of traditional teacherdirected exposition and passive student assimilation of the structures of objective reality. Constructivism calls for teaching that encourages students' active engagement in the construction of their own cognitive structures and perceptions of reality. To encourage constructivist thinking in the context of network-based distance education, teachers encourage active teacher-student and student-peer dialogue. However, there are practical limits to the number of students with whom an instructor can teach. The finite capacity of teachers to conduct and monitor these different forms of student interaction imposes limits on the capacity of institutions to match the massive numbers of students served by correspondence and mass media-based distance education systems.Notwithstanding these logistical and practical limits to applications of industrial mass production methods to online distance education at the stage of implementation, such applications continue to be relevant for other stages of distance education design and development. When reliant on print-based course materials, large distance education providers, for example, usually maintain large stockpiles of course materials to be shipped as needed to enrolled students. Production of such materials incurs costs of printing, stockpiling, and warehousing. Printing presses and warehouse facilities occupy space. Materials need to be stored, moved, and processed; sometimes Cookson, Vol. 4, No. 2, Editorial: Does "lean thinking" relate to network-based distance education? 2 they become ou...

show abstract

Using Peer Teams to Lead Online Discussions

Cited by 128 publications

References 29 publications

Student Actions and Community in Online Courses: The Roles Played By Course Length and Facilitation Method

Student Actions and Community in Online Courses: The Roles Played By Course Length and Facilitation Method

Como criar e manter interações de qualidade em cursos online?

IRRODL Volume 4, Number 2

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About